For 1st Time, Most Say Cut Space Spending

May 25, 1993|By Shirish Date of The Sentinel Staff

CAPE CANAVERAL — For the first time since the question was first asked seven years ago, a slight majority of Americans thinks the United States should reduce spending on its space program, according to a nationwide poll released Monday.

Support for NASA's proposed space station Freedom also slipped, again, in the latest poll commissioned by Rockwell International Corp., the aerospace company that built the U.S. space shuttle fleet.

Fifty-one percent of those questioned recently agreed that expenditures for the U.S. civilian space program should be cut - a nine-point jump from last year's survey.

Until now, public sentiment for cutting back on space spending had remained relatively steady since the mid-1980s, with 42 percent favoring a smaller space budget in 1992 compared with 40 percent in 1990, 44 percent in 1989, 36 percent in 1988 and 35 percent in 1986.

Sixty-three percent of those questioned this year still favor building a space station in Earth orbit, down from 65 percent last year, 74 percent three years ago and 78 percent in 1988.

At the same time, those surveyed also agreed by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio that ''the U.S. government should spend whatever is necessary to maintain U.S. leadership in space.'' And 57 percent agreed with the statement, ''America's civilian space program should be expanded.''

Such seeming contradictions are to be expected on surveys about space exploration, said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

''Lots of people want to increase spending on the space program. Lots of people want to cut it. And they're the same people,'' he said.

The research firm Yankelovich Partners Inc. of Newport Beach, Calif., conducted 15-minute telephone interviews with 1,002 registered voters across the country from April 29 through May 4. The margin of sampling error for any single response is plus or minus three percentage points.